


snowglobe jump

by macha



Series: Georgia on My Mind [5]
Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-05-08
Updated: 2007-05-08
Packaged: 2017-10-18 11:45:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/188578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/macha/pseuds/macha





	snowglobe jump

###  _A01.14.03 Age of Earth: in the matrix, we are home._

and the name of the tale is:

### snowglobe jump

i knew the moment everything was lost. i felt it all start to go, and i couldn't catch it. Spike and i back to back, fisty and fangy, not such a bad way to go down, really. still, a whole world, mine, what could possibly be more careless than to lose it all in a moment? they're all called final battles, right down to the wire, and this one really was. although what wire's got to do with it, who knows, i leave the wiring to the menfolk, safer that way, cause me, i'm more inclined to use the axe. had the axe, of course, and wasn't nearly running out of stuff to chop.

but anyway this was a battle that we had to win and i just plain lost it, which put the nail in final. hey, always something new under the suns. life did its sucky thing, and i got handed dirt, and then i even lost the dirt. the world stopped turning, which - i mean, who knew it was that important, the turning thing? and i could feel it coming, that long slide, into oblivion. not just for me, but everything and everyone i shared the planet Earth with. after all, an end to everything, isn't that really the one not-evitable thing?

and i accepted it, i did, but only for myself, and not for them. i'd really pushed that expiration date by that time, but since Willow shared the gift there were plenty of other slayers, every one of them younger than me. and for the world too, you know, it's hard to think that big but after all we share it with how many billion people, and if there's nothing to stand on they all go poof along with me and the nice scenery. well okay my personal scenery, not so great at the time, rivers of bloodbath mostly in decor, otherwise pretty bleak, but surely somebody somewhere still had a view to protect.

and truth to tell, the part where somebody seemed to have scheduled the end of the world to happen on my watch? it really rankled. i felt i had a few moves left to try, and if you couldn't trust the planet to stay put long enough for me to try them, i mean what could you trust? so i had a bit of a stubborn Summers moment, on behalf of everyone i'd ever known and also the nameless billions. and she had said to me, that first time we met, call, if you need me, and i'll be there. people don't usually mean it, in my experience, but dragons, stands to reason that's a whole nother kettle. i was in the middle of a double backflip over a very big pile of bodies when the sky opened, pretty plainly not a good, and it was hard to form a thought, but i managed something like 'i guess it's time'.

so i called her. what did i have to lose? another illusion? and there were so many dragons everywhere at the time, i could hardly not have got the visual. and just like that, she was there, plucking me out of the air in the middle of that frozen moment. i read amusement when the one eyebrow, size of a tree, lifted. she didn't seem to be surprised, or in any hurry.

and in the language of the heart she told me to think of the safest place i could remember. and weirdly there was my mother's bedroom set falling around me, into the stop-motion of the battlefield. the kitchen counter, the pictures on the stairs, the back porch, the bedroom window, the number on the front door, the basement steps, reforming in the maybe-air all around me. like a surrealist dream by Magritte or someone like that.

and then everyone who was with me there on the last night before the end of Sunnydale, Willow and Xander, Faith, Anya, Giles, Andrew, Dawn, the baby slayers, and Spike of course ('come in', i think i whispered, just in case, as he fell into view above the magic box). until everything and everyone i lost on the day after was unlost, looking as solid as they ever were, sprawled on the couches, checking out the fridge, and playing monopoly or senet or crazy eights on the floor, surrounded by ancient texts and arguing in about 47 languages.

there was even a fire in the fireplace. and i felt, i dunno how to say, but loved, and warm, and home again. looking at a world, my world, in a round glass ball i wanted to shake, see if snow started to fall. wanting to fall in there, and live at last, with everyone i loved. wanting to keep them safe, forever, inside the narrow universe that was maybe by now no longer even mine.

this is a pretty good trick, i remember thinking, a just reward, this gift. to give me, all i can take, in memory, out of this world and into the next. and i was grateful for the kindness of it. to get to take with me everything i loved, and not to be alone, the way i used to think it had to be, there at the end. so when she said, now jump, i jumped, with my whole heart, into the snowglobe world and the vortex left behind of world-end, or so it seemed to me, ready and more than ready for whatever came.

i had it right, i guess, when i said 'it's time', cause time was what it was, the gift. a whole lifetime of dealing with illusions and it took a dragon to introduce me to exactly what that science indistinguishable from magic thing looked like when it worked. i think it has something to do with Georgia all comfy in the fourth dimension, and um hologram surfaces, and exotic matter. we rode the wormhole and all around me, everyone and everything about that moment i remembered became part of where we went. into, out of my heart and hers, built and still building into eternity as Earth winked out behind us forever and we became, inhabited, embraced, the ship and everyone in it, in deepspace, all wrapped around me, safe in Georgia's arms, forever jumping too.


End file.
